gardeningfandomcom-20200215-history
User talk:Nashville Monkey
Hi Nashville Monkey -- we are excited to have Gardening Wiki as part of the Wikia community! Starting a new wiki can be overwhelming, but don't worry, the Wikia Community Team is here to help! We have put together a few guides to getting started. They say imitation is the best form of flattery so absolutely check out other wikis on Wikia for ideas on layout, ways to organize your content, etc. We are all one big family at Wikia and the most important thing is to have fun! * Our guide to Getting Started gives you 5 things you can do right now to set your wiki up for success * We also put together some Advice On Starting a Wiki which provides a more a in-depth look at some of the important things you should consider when building a wiki * If you are new to wikis in general than we recommend checking our new user FAQ If you need help (which trust me we ALL do) you can access our full in-depth help at Help Wikia, or email us through our . Also, you can visit our live #wikia chat channel any time. A lot of the veteran "Wikians" hang out here so its a good place if come if you want to get some advice or simply make friends. Now, go edit! We look forward to seeing this project thrive! Best wishes, Catherine Munro Great start! You're off to a lovely beginning here -- the green skin is a perfect fit, and I love what you're doing with the pictures like Oregano! Can I answer any questions for you, or help with a logo or a custom skin? Please don't hesitate to ask, it's what I'm here for! — Catherine (talk) 01:28, 27 May 2008 (UTC) :Custom skin? Yes, I'd like one but not sure of the look exactly I'd like to utilize Image:Header resized.jpg somehow toward the left but no other ideas as yet... Nashville Monkey 18:08, 27 May 2008 (UTC) Tone No, it's normal to have/want a little time to set up the structure before opening to the masses. In my experience it's very unusual to have two new editors arrive in your first two days! I think that that just shows that there is a great demand and desire for this wiki -- I think people must be typing "gardening wiki" into search engines every day and haven't been finding much up to now. You might want to write a brief paragraph at Gardening:Writing style or Gardening:Manual of style describing what tone you are hoping for, then invite others to discuss the page with you so you can work out guidelines together. I know you have been working more on design issues than content so far, but it might be helpful to flesh out a sample article, perhaps at Oregano, as an example of good article structure and tone. As for dealing with editors, just talk to them. :) Speak to others as you would like to be spoken to, assume good faith -- i.e., assume that they are trying to help and not hurt, and discuss solutions rather than problems. I'll talk to Kirk if you like. Also, don't be afraid to just edit other's contributions to improve them -- that's the wiki way, and editors are either already familiar with it or need to learn. As long as you are polite and constructive about it, you'll do fine. We have a welcoming template at Template:Welcome (I've just added a pretty flower picture to it!) -- you can add a link to your writing style guidelines or anything else you feel is important. Paste the code to the Talk page of new users to welcome them and encourage them to keep coming back. — Catherine (talk) 06:37, 27 May 2008 (UTC) More ideas Note that you are welcome to copy content from Wikipedia, as long as the source is credited with a template. Naturally you don't want your articles to be identical to theirs, as you have the freedom to provide much more that's useful specifically to gardeners, and don't necessarily need their encyclopedic scientific detail. There's a great deal of useful content there, however, and copying useful paragraphs or even importing complete articles as a starting place for your own work is legal, and sometimes can be a great help in getting a wiki started. (We can help if you'd like to do a large amount of importing.) There are many freely licensed photos available on Wikimedia Commons (Commons:Category:Plants) and through Flickr (see for a search tool). It's also a good idea to start thinking about what sort of category tree you'd like to build -- categories can be very important for organizing a growing wiki. See Help:Categories for more info. You're doing great so far! I'll continue to keep an eye on this and help where I can. Good luck! — Catherine (talk) 06:37, 27 May 2008 (UTC) Templates Hi, I'm Wendy, a helper with wikia. I see you are doing a lot of playing with templates. Is there something I can help you make? If you can tell me roughly what you want, I can set up an example that you can copy/modify for yourself... -- Wendy (talk) 17:53, 27 May 2008 (UTC) :Hi Wendy, I really appreciate you offer of help! I'm not sure exactly what it is I'm looking for (thus the playing), I'm trying to figure out how to organize the different types of plant articles using the same template for each just to make it easier. herbs would be one color, annuals another, then perennials, shrubs, trees, xeriscape plants, etc... {shrug} I'm basically lost, however I did find a useful template on another wikia and that's what I'm experimenting with now. Suggestions? Nashville Monkey 18:00, 27 May 2008 (UTC) ::Ok, what happened at Sandbox? see the "{{#if: Oregano.jpg |" over on the left? that shouldn't be there should it? Nashville Monkey 18:05, 27 May 2008 (UTC) :::Do you mean the whole template box a different color? Or just the bars? I was looking at your Template:Test. It's currently set up (as far as I can tell) to do the color part, and I fixed the if statements so the fields are properly hidden. If you want the whole box to change color then you'd need to input two colors..... Anyhow that's certainly one way to set it up by color, -- have people put in the appropriate color for the classification and make sure you have the color codes you want in the usage area. Alternately you could just have a Template:Herb, Template:Annual, etc... :::And the extra "if" was because you were missing some brackets :). -- Wendy (talk) 18:09, 27 May 2008 (UTC) :::btw, you might want to check out Orchids Wiki. It's really well done on a related subject :). -- Wendy (talk) 18:13, 27 May 2008 (UTC) ::::Brackets, the bane of programmers everywhere :) I checked out Orchids Wiki and http://orchids.wikia.com/wiki/Template:Infobox is what I am looking for, the bars and border would change according to the classification (is that even possible?).Nashville Monkey 18:23, 27 May 2008 (UTC) Hello again -- good job getting that set up! I added a colored border -- is that what you meant? Or did you want something else set to that color? Also I briefly played with a way to make it so you could just say "Type=Herb" and have the color get set, but I haven't got it right yet, so I undid it. I'll poke around and see if I can figure that out, as I think it will be easier. I'm reasonably certain it can be done, but it's more complex. -- Wendy (talk) 00:22, 28 May 2008 (UTC) :Hi. I got it working so you can just say "type=Herb" or whatever and the color will change. At least I hope I did :). Template:Test2 is the modified code, which is sadly much more complicated than the original template. And I put up a sample on the Sandbox for you to see... Let me know if you want it tweaked further. -- Wendy (talk) 03:33, 28 May 2008 (UTC) ::I'm glad you like it - although I confess I copied the worst of the coding :). Let me know when you are ready to tweak it or if you have any other questions; I'm happy to help. -- Wendy (talk) 05:04, 28 May 2008 (UTC) Main page How do I edit the Main Page and get the edit to show? Proxima Centauri 10:21, 14 June 2008 (UTC) :As far as I know you just click edit, type the new stuff and then click save. Should work fine. Let me know if that's not working for you. Nashville Monkey 02:07, 16 June 2008 (UTC) You deleted my article about Gardening for people with disabilities. I’ll try and rewrite it and put more work into it. Is that OK? Proxima Centauri 11:47, 29 June 2008 (UTC) :It's OK. I've seen the article's still there. Proxima Centauri 09:29, 30 June 2008 (UTC) Cross-wiki links Hi Nashville Monkey! I see you're doing well with Gardening Wiki. I'm Swannie, the founder of Symbolism Wiki. Just recently, I began some articles about flowers and other plants (list of flowers). I was wondering if we could make some cross-wiki links from each wiki about various flower/plant articles. Also, I was wondering if anyone here would be interested in writing some brief descriptions about the flowers on Symbolism Wiki. Thanks! [[User:Swannie|'Swannie']] - (talk) 19:09, 5 July 2008 (UTC) Admins You can give other people admin rights by using --there isn't really a step "below" admin, although you don't have to give them bureaucrat rights (the right to make other users admins) if you choose not to. There's no harm in having several trustworthy folks as admins. :) They can help to keep the wiki running smoothly. I hope your back is feeling better soon! — Catherine (talk) 04:50, 10 September 2008 (UTC) Good Luck! Thanks for telling me this. Usually I check in on my various wikis (Warriors, Gardening, StarWars, etc...) so I guess I'll be able to do this pretty well. Good luck during your surgery, and I hope you recover quickly and easily. --[[User:ThunderClan14|'T']][[User talk:ThunderClan14|'C']] 00:25, 29 October 2008 (UTC)